Chong Lee was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and other charges following a murder at the Luna Lounge in Appleton, Wisconsin. During the investigation, police interviewed three eyewitnesses who described the shooter but refused to be identified due to safety fears. The State failed to disclose these initial interviews to the defense and later intentionally destroyed the recordings of those interviews to keep the witnesses hidden. Although the State accidentally disclosed the witnesses' names later, prompting new interviews, the defense discovered the destruction of the original recordings. The trial court ruled that the State violated due process under California v. Trombetta and Arizona v. Youngblood but imposed a remedy that barred the State from calling the witnesses while allowing the defense to call them, with a warning that doing so might open the door to testimony about the witnesses' fear for their safety. Lee did not call the witnesses at trial and was convicted. After state appeals were exhausted, Lee filed a federal habeas petition arguing the State's conduct warranted dismissal of the charges or a different remedy.
The Seventh Circuit, writing for the panel, began by acknowledging the State's conduct was deeply troubling. Judge Kolar wrote that 'hiding and then destroying evidence undermines the foundational due process principles upon which our criminal justice system relies.' The court confirmed that the State likely violated Brady v. Maryland by failing to disclose the initial interviews and violated California v. Trombetta and Arizona v. Youngblood by intentionally destroying the recordings in bad faith. However, the court's review was constrained by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which requires federal courts to defer to state court decisions unless they are 'contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law.' Regarding the Brady claim, the court found the state court did not unreasonably apply the law in determining the suppressed evidence was not favorable or material, noting that the witnesses did not identify Lee and the defense could not prove the destroyed recordings would have changed the verdict. Regarding the Trombetta and Youngblood claim, the court addressed the remedy. While the trial court's remedy left Lee with a 'Hobson's choice'—risking harmful testimony if he called the witnesses or forfeiting exculpatory testimony if he did not—the Supreme Court has not established that a specific remedy is constitutionally required when evidence is destroyed. The court noted that neither Youngblood nor Trombetta mandates a specific remedy, and the state court's decision to bar the witnesses rather than dismiss the case was not an 'objectively unreasonable' application of federal law. The court stressed that 'even a strong case for relief does not mean the state court's contrary conclusion was unreasonable.'
Chong Lee remains in custody under his original sentence, which includes life imprisonment with eligibility for extended supervised release beginning in 2048. The decision clarifies that while federal courts recognize the gravity of evidence destruction, the AEDPA standard of review prevents federal intervention unless the state court's chosen remedy is objectively unreasonable. The ruling leaves open the question of whether an adverse-inference instruction would have been a better remedy, but confirms that the absence of such an instruction does not automatically constitute a constitutional violation under current Supreme Court precedent.
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